Drops of Jupiter  prequel
by Mara202
Summary: Wherein Harry struggles with the theoretical part of his Auror training and Blaise turns out to be not just a good teacher, but also a good kisser. Harry/Blaise slash.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own Harry Potter or any of its characters. I'm writing for fun, not money.

**Rating:** PG-13 for the occasional swear word.

**Pairing:** Harry/Blaise (boy!Blaise, obviously. I don't really see why I should warn for this, as he's canonically male, but apparently some people still expect girl!Blaise when it's not explicitly mentioned, so...)

**Word count: **about 2,600.

**Warnings/classifications:** Slash, probably ill-timed attempts at humour (the sequel is pretty cracky, so this one couldn't get too serious).

**Summary:** _In which Harry struggles with the theoretical part of his Auror training and Blaise turns out to be not just a good teacher, but also a good kisser._

**Author's notes: **Prequel to my post-_Deathly Hallows_ H/B fic _Drops of Jupiter_ (DoJ). This takes place about two years before DoJ. It's not nearly as cracky as the sequel ('in which there are aliens, and everybody _thinks_ Harry and Blaise are sleeping together, but they're actually not'), but still contains some (hopefully not too random and out-of-place-seeming) humour. There may be a second part to this in the future ('in which everything goes to hell').

**:::**

_Dammit_, Harry cursed inwardly. The first day of the theoretical part of his Auror training, and he was late. And didn't have a clue where he had to go. He all but ran into the University of Magic building, and promptly bumped into—

Great. As if this day wasn't shitty enough yet.

"Late, Potter?" drawled Blaise Zabini, as usual looking like he was silently laughing at Harry. Or maybe that was just paranoia on Harry's part.

Harry was about to snap an irritable reply, when Zabini's expression changed. "The stairs are over there. Auror classes are on the second floor, third door on the left."

For a moment, Harry was too stunned to speak and merely stood there, blinking. "Er. Thanks," he managed eventually. "I think," he added under his breath, as he hurried to the stairs.

He thought he could feel Zabini's eyes on his back.

**:::**

Harry groaned. He got why Aurors would need to have some basic understanding of magical theory, but this? Was just pure torture.

"_Why_ do we need to learn all this stuff?" he moaned, when he and Ron walked into the classroom for their rune practical.

"Basic rune magic could save your life if you lose your wand, you know," said a familiar voice near his ear.

Harry jumped. Ron was more direct. "What are _you_ doing here, Zabini?"

"Ah. They actually pay me to help teach you poor sods some rune magic," the Slytherin drawled—_was there any other way he could speak?_ Harry wondered.

"Brilliant," Harry sighed miserably.

"Why, yes, I am." And again there was that vaguely amused look that annoyed Harry so much.

**:::**

Harry felt the strong urge to bang his head against his desk. Everyone else—even Ron, the traitor—had already finished and handed in their exercises, whereas he was still stuck on question number three out of five. Although, to be fair, he had only himself to blame. He'd been late to class—again—and by the time he had arrived, everyone had already formed groups and started working on the exercises.

Eventually his complete inability to solve even the simplest exercise had driven him to swallow his pride and ask Zabini for help. Which went to show how desperate the situation was.

"How is this structure wrong?" he demanded, when Zabini had shaken his head and tutted for the umpteenth time within a span of a few minutes. "There's only five runes, how much can go wrong with that?"

Zabini, sitting on the edge of the desk, seemed to be counting mentally to ten before saying, "What type of rune is your root?" sounding remarkably patient, even after having got about a billion questions like this one during the past one hour and a half, quite a lot of which had come from Harry.

He blinked. "There's different sorts?"

"_Yes_," Zabini ground out. "These four runes _can_ be used to strengthen and give direction to the root—"

"So what's the problem?"

"—but only if the root is water-based. This one's earth-based," Zabini continued, completely ignoring Harry's interruption.

Harry groaned. "I'm going to fail miserably, aren't I?"

"Not... necessarily," Zabini said slowly, the same unreadable expression as a few days earlier crossing his features. "I could... give you some private tutoring."

Harry looked up sharply.

**:::**

"Why are you doing this?" Harry couldn't help but ask during his first tutoring session.

Zabini looked up from the simple rune structure he'd been examining. He shrugged. "I like runes."

"No, but seriously. Aren't you supposed to hate me? Being a Slytherin and all that?" Harry pressed on.

Zabini rolled his eyes. "I wish people would stop going on about the whole 'Slytherin thing'," he said, making quotation marks in the air. "We are people, too, you know."

"So I don't have to worry you're deliberately teaching me wrong structures?" Harry joked. Well, attempted to sound joking. He did have his suspicions, after all.

Zabini looked affronted and possibly just the tiniest bit hurt. "I wouldn't do that to you," he said, sounding surprisingly sincere. But before Harry could think anything of it, he added, "Runes can be pretty dangerous. We can't have Aurors accidentally ripping holes in the space-time continuum."

"... That can actually happen?" Harry asked, immediately feeling stupid for being so gullible.

The amused expression was back, but for some reason it didn't annoy Harry as much anymore.

**:::**

"So how are your rune classes going?" Hermione asked. "Ron told me you, er..."

"Were failing miserably?" Harry finished her sentence. "Yeah. But I finally seem to be getting the hang of it."

"Oh?"

"Private tutoring," he explained, feeling a bit embarrassed. "Zabini is actually a pretty decent teacher."

"Zabini? How did that happen?" Hermione asked, baffled.

"I'm... not really sure. They pay Theoretical Magic students to help during the rune practicals. I wasn't doing too well, and then, well, he offered."

"That's... slightly bizarre. Are you sure he isn't actually teaching you the wrong stuff, so he and his friends can have a laugh at you when you fail?" Hermione asked, echoing Harry's earlier paranoia.

Harry shrugged. "He said he—I quote—'wouldn't do something like that to me'. Apparently he just really likes rune magic. And it's not like I can get any worse at it, anyway."

Hermione considered this. "He just doesn't really seem the type for this sort of thing." She pondered the case a bit longer, then joked, "Maybe he fancies you!"

Harry laughed with her.

**:::**

After a while, Harry actually started looking forward to his sessions with Zabini. Or _Blaise_, as he had for some reason started calling him in his head. As he had told Hermione, Blaise really was a very decent teacher. His explanations of the mechanics behind rune magic actually made the structures more logical to him rather than less, as his actual teacher's explanations were wont to do. And Blaise was considerably more entertaining than the actual teacher.

Ron had merely laughed at him when Harry had told him. "Private tutoring with Zabini? What did you do to deserve _that_?"

Harry had privately thought that Ron could do with some private tutoring as well, but had kept his mouth shut. He didn't actually want Ron to join in. And anyway, Ron never asked, and Blaise never offered.

"Ah, no," Blaise said, leaning over to cross out one of the runes, briefly touching Harry's arm in the process. "This won't work. Why?"

"I have no idea. Why?" Harry echoed.

"Yes, you do," Blaise said, nudging him playfully. "Come on, think rune types."

Harry lowered his head onto the table and groaned. "Right, water-based."

**:::**

"How'd you end up in Slytherin, anyway? You seem too ..." he trailed off, not sure how to end that sentence. He and Blaise were lounging outside the UM building under the pretence of working on his rune exercises, but actually just enjoying the nice weather.

"Nice?" Blaise offered with a snort. "Honestly, Potter. Not all of us are Death Eating psychos." He thought about his sentence for a while. "Hmm. That didn't sound quite right."

"None of you joined us in the Battle for Hogwarts." Harry tried to sound neutral, but it still came out a bit accusingly.

Blaise raised an eyebrow. "Would you have trusted any of us?" At Harry's—guilty—expression, he huffed a bitter laugh, before leaning back to lie on the grass. "Didn't think so."

Harry didn't know what to say, except 'sorry', but that would be a bit lame, so he didn't say anything and waited for Blaise to speak up.

"Slytherin has a lot of good qualities, too, you know. It's not fair that the actions of a few have given the entire house a bad name."

Harry hummed his agreement. "I was almost sorted into Slytherin," he admitted. Blaise sat up again, regarding him, but didn't say anything. "The Hat said Slytherin would be good for me. But by then I'd heard so many bad things about Slytherin that I wanted to be sorted anywhere but."

After some consideration, Blaise said thoughtfully, "I suppose you do have some Slytherin qualities." He suddenly reached over, startling Harry. "You had a leaf in your hair," he explained, showing the offending object.

"Oh," Harry said stupidly, feeling out of his depth. "Er. Thanks."

Blaise continued as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. "You should meet my friend Daphne some time. I think you'd like her."

"Did I hear my name?" it suddenly sounded from behind them.

Harry and Blaise both looked up. A blond girl—Daphne Greengrass, obviously—smiled at Blaise, but when she recognised Harry, her eyes widened. "Potter," she said cautiously.

"I'm helping him with his rune homework," Blaise explained.

As Daphne's eyes flicked from Blaise to him and back, Harry suddenly was very aware of the complete lack of rune-related stuff lying about.

"Ah," she said. "Well, don't let me keep you."

"Oh, don't— I was just about to leave. Class is in a few minutes," Harry said hurriedly, scrambling for his stuff. As he got to his feet, he turned to Blaise, who was looking at him a bit bemusedly. "Thanks. I guess I'll see you on... Thursday?"

**:::**

"Hey, Potter, wait up!" a voice called out as he walked to the UM doors. Harry turned around and saw Daphne Greengrass hurrying in his direction.

"My class is about to start, too. I thought I could just as well walk with you," she explained with a smile.

_Since when are Slytherins nice to me?_ Harry wondered, bemused. "Um. Sure," he managed.

"I'm really happy for you," she said out of nowhere.

"What do you mean?" he asked, carefully.

"That you and Blaise... you know," she elaborated, looking a bit uncomfortable. And then suddenly it all clicked.

"_What?_" he squeaked. In a very manly way, of course.

Daphne looked at him, horrified. "You mean you —"

"No!" Harry exclaimed, shocked. "Why would you even think that?"

"_Merlin_. I'm so sorry," Daphne moaned. "Blaise is going to _kill_ me. Can you just er... forget everything I just said?"

"He's... gay, then?"

Suddenly all the smiles and friendliness had vanished from the blonde's face. "If you abuse this information in any way... If you hurt Blaise—" she hissed.

"I would never—!" Harry protested.

"Good." Her expression softened again, and Harry uttered a mental sigh of relief. Daphne could be really scary when she wanted to. "Don't let this change anything, okay?" she said softly. "Blaise can be a great friend."

A few door started opening, and students started to swarm through them. Daphne continued to hold his gaze.

"I won't," he promised.

**:::**

But of course it _did_ change things. Suddenly all the brief touches and half-smiles—Harry didn't think Blaise ever _really_ smiled—got a completely different meaning.

Blaise nudging him playfully when he was being particularly obtuse or losing his focus.

Blaise stopping him with a hand on his arm when he was about to write a wrong rune.

Blaise high-fiving him when he'd completed an exercise without any help. (The meaningful looks when he was about to mess up didn't count as help.)

Blaise's eyes lighting up when he spotted Harry. (Although that might just have been Harry's imagination-slash-paranoia.)

All in all, it was hard to ignore. But he found he couldn't bring himself to care. The realisation he was doing the same—touching Blaise's arm to get his attention, looking for him when he entered the classroom, and so on—was a bit more of a shock, but was easily explained away. (Okay, not really. Harry just chose to live in blissful ignorance. Just as he ignored the strange fluttering in his stomach whenever he spotted Blaise. He made a mental note not to eat pumpkin-strawberry cake again; it obviously didn't agree with him.)

**:::**

Harry surprised himself by actually doing pretty well on his rune exam. Well, at least he _thought_ he'd done a pretty decent job.

He was just leaving the classroom, talking to Ron about the exam—Ron hadn't done so well—when Blaise popped up. "Hey. How did it go?"

Ron shot him a suspicious look that the Slytherin ignored completely.

"Pretty well, I think," Harry replied, smiling involuntarily.

"Good to know I didn't waste my time." The remark sounded arrogant enough that Ron bristled, but Harry saw a flicker of amusement in his dark eyes. On an impulse, he touched Blaise's arm and said, "Ron and I were about to go for a drink. Want to come with? The least I can do for all your help is buy you a drink."

Blaise looked at him appraisingly, then glanced at Ron and eventually said, "Sure, thanks."

**:::**

A few Butterbeers later, Harry was having a very good time. Ron hadn't seemed to feel the same way, though, and had left a while before.

As Blaise was telling animatedly about that one time one of his fellow students' rune structure had gone wrong in a rather hilarious way, Hermione's joking words crossed his mind unbidden.

"Do you fancy me?" he suddenly blurted out and immediately mentally hit himself over the head. _Way to go, Harry_, he thought.

Blaise stopped mid-sentence. "I... _what_?"

"Merlin, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to suggest you're —" Harry babbled, "That is—"

But then he caught sight of Blaise's expression, which showed a suspicious likeness to that of a deer caught in headlights—or in, oh, whatever was the magical equivalent of headlights. "_Merlin_," he repeated, for good measure, too shocked to come up with something more intelligent.

"I guess I'd better get going, then," Blaise said stiffly. "Thanks for the drink."

By the time Harry had regained his ability to speak, Blaise had already left the pub.

**:::**

"You were right," Harry said, the next time he met up with Hermione.

"Of course I am," she replied, distractedly. "About what?"

"About Zabini, you know ..." he said, feeling a blush creep up his cheeks.

It took Hermione a while to catch on, but then her eyes widened. "_Oh_."

"Yeah."

"So?"

"...'so'?"

"What exactly is the problem?" Hermione clarified, rolling her eyes.

Harry pondered this. "Huh. I don't know," he admitted. After a while, he added, "He sort of ran off after I found out."

"Why do you care? You don't fancy him," Hermione commented, after a pause adding a less certain, "do you?"

"Ha, no. Definitely no," Harry laughed. But then realisation dawned. "_Shit_."

**:::**

Harry took a deep breath and rang Blaise's door bell. A nerve-wracking two minutes later, the door finally opened.

"What are you doing here?" Blaise asked warily, his expression completely closed off.

"Are you alone?" Harry asked in return, fidgeting a bit.

"Why? So you can Avada Kedavra me in peace for being—" Blaise began, hostilely.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Oh, for—" He didn't finish his sentence, but instead—before he could start listing reasons why this was probably the craziest thing he had ever done—he took a bold step forward, cupped Blaise's face, said, "You're an idiot"—which effectively silenced Blaise—and kissed him.

When he pulled back, Blaise stared at him in shock. "But... I thought—" he eventually managed.

Harry grinned. "Seems we were both wrong." Suddenly nervous again, he shuffled his feet, he said, "So, are you going to invite me in?"

"About time!" somebody yelled from somewhere behind Blaise.

Harry's eyes widened in shock. _What if all of Slytherin was sitting there? _His life would be_ ruined!_ He ventured a look, and to his relief only spotted Daphne, who smiled and gave him a thumbs-up. He blushed.

"I never said I was alone," Blaise said, almost sounding apologetic, but the beginnings of a smirk tugging on the corners of his mouth betrayed his amusement.

**The end**

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Thanks for reading! I hope you liked it!

The actual story _Drops of Jupiter_ has been uploaded as a separate story. (Both can be read separately.)


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